Analog Drum Patches

It's probably safe to say most people don't think much about what sounds a synthesizer makes. When they do, they think of dreamy pads, aggressive bass, or a thick saw lead. Less obviously, a modular synth can be used to generate really useful percussive sounds.

The basic patch can be an oscillator generating a saw or sine wave with a fast envelope controlling the pitch (that's what gives you your thwump). Mix that tone with white noise and run it into a filter. Adjust the ratio of noise and tone and the frequency you set the filter at. One more envelope is used for your main amplifier gate. Doing this, I created a kick, snare, and hi-hat sample.

Here's a video showing what the kick originally sounded like. I do some handwaving to hide the processing magic. Someday maybe I'll show you what's behind that curtain too. I can tell you I'm running the track through the Dirtshaper effect on the Elektron Tonverk. It is doing some heavy lifting but the samples from the modular are great percussive seeds for the effect.

If these were the only sounds ever produced by this synthesizer we are looking at a cost of about $53,000 per second of audio produced. It's a pretty good deal.